Thursday, October 31, 2013

To most, he was just another face in the crowd until he disappeared one night. After that, his name was spoken everywhere, but only in the hushed tones of frightened people who were now his followers, followers of a man most had never seen and never would. There was no explanation coming from the government, and none brave enough to ask, but those in power were unwilling to risk that someone might. They ordered the electronic commands issued that would traverse every network, invade every system, remove any connection to those who knew him, and delete every record of his existence. Slowly, the man who was just another face in the crowd became the man without a face at all.

This comment came in via Twitter - not sure why the comments weren't working at the time, so I'll post it here:

@WOKRSmith For some reason I can't comment on your blog. But, I wanted to say how spectacular your FSF is this week! Love it!
— FSF (@5SentenceFic) November 6, 2013

Friday, October 25, 2013

This is Part II of a Five Sentence Fiction story I wrote some time ago called Wardrobe Malfunction. It was based on a dieselpunk/steampunk story from another FSF writer, Rogue Tinker. And by continuing the story, I get to use the word dieselpunk again which, for some reason, always excites me.

When we last left our heroine, she was trapped on the side of an enormous analog computational engine that controlled the city's entire infrastructure, with part of her goggles jamming the works...Yes, I know that's happened to all of us at one time or another, so I'll try to come up with something more original in the future.

Escape(or Wardrobe Malfunction, Part II)

Her muscles were beginning to quiver, exhausted from clinging to the side of the enormous mechanical beast that governed the city's workings, but she was determined not to have her life end splattered on the ground below—or worse—pureed among the pinions. Unable to move the top of her body because of the goggle strap jamming the mechanism, Ysabelle slowly raised her foot closer to where her right hand had a tenuous grip on the oily metal. With her foot finally resting on the metal bar beside her fingers, she pulled a small knife from her boot before wedging her leg into the framework for support, and then delicately sliced the leather to free herself. Once again able to maneuver, she used the blade to extricate the strap end out of the cogs, and the myriad of gears resumed their rotation, as did, unfortunately, the entire section of clockwork on which she was perched. Although Ysabelle was hiding the fact that she was a young woman from those who thought her occupation to be the soul domain of men, few in the crowd that had gathered to observe the spectacle would have suspected even if they had been within earshot, for the next words she uttered were most assuredly unladylike.

"To help everyone understand all of the new words we've learned, we're going to play a little game," the teacher said, "where everyone gets to tell me something about those words. We'll start by describing something you might experience from malice."
The teacher called on each young student as she went around the room, all of them describing in great detail some dark scenario, until she noticed a girl in the back nearly in tears. When questioned, she asked, "Why does everyone hate me?"
The confused teacher put her arm around the child and said, "We don't hate you, Alice!"

Thursday, October 3, 2013

It's been a while since I posted a weekly photo, so I figured I'd better put one out here. This week's photo is of the sun behind the clouds. I took this while stuck in a traffic jam during the ride home from work a few weeks back.

Feel free to use the picture as long as attribution is given. You can use the text below for that:

It was an e-mail reply from a publisher, but he wasn't sure he wanted to read it. He'd sent out so many submissions and they had all come back with the word "rejected" somewhere in the first sentence. After much consternation, Wilbur clicked on the icon. He didn't even check which of his writings it was in response to before his eyes locked onto the words, "Your story has been accepted." There would be a celebration that night.

You can read other entries for this week's Five Sentence Fiction challenge by clicking HERE.